step through my door, then you’re in my house. And I make the rules here. (Osembenga laughs again.) (Not- tage 29)
Within this exchange, we see two times at which Osembenga attempts to intimidate Mama out of her request for the removal of their ammunition. First, Nottage leaves the inflection of a question off of his reply, wondering what would happen if he didn’t do as he was asked. A woman in a war-torn country, addressing an officer would have more than enough rea- sons to back down from her policy. Mama does not. She remains calm, insists that he will not be served if he remains armed and keeps the beer he has requested in her hand. The second moment comes when he has given a hearty robust masculine laugh before asking if she knows who he is, yet Mama responds telling him that it doesn’t really matter. Rather than bending to the will of the man before her, Mama stands her ground and hold true to her standards even though she has no real way to enforce them given the status of the man before her. This is another moment in which the audience would have been understanding had Mama needed to accommodate the officers, especially after hearing the stories of the women in her care, but Nottage resists this path. Mama has enough agency to judge whether or not this is a moment when she is able to stand her ground. Later in the play there are mo- ments when she chooses to appease the men in some way, but it is never because she has not chosen that as the best course of action. She ultimately maintains culpability for every- thing that happens within her establishment.
At the end of the play Mama makes the decision to try and provide a better life for Sophie by entrusting her care, and the money from the sale of the diamond she has kept as an insurance policy, to Mr. Harari. He is in a rush to leave the area as the conflict is being waged in an ever increasing proximity to Mama’s bar. Mr. Harari’s ride arrives before Sophie is ready to leave, and rather than miss his chance of escape he takes the diamond and leaves without her. Mama is not even given enough time to react when Mama discovers this betray- al. Osembenga and Salima’s husband Fortune burst in to raid the bar attempting to locate the leader of the rebel army. In a moment of desperation Salima comes out to end the chaos. In the first glimpse Fortune has of her she is covered in blood from a self-inflicted wound. Her last words, spoken from Fortune’s arms, are a declaration: “You will not fight your battles on my body anymore” (Nottage 63). Salima refuses to give up her own agency, her own bodily autonomy, and takes her own life. Mr. Harari is not heard from again.
Mama and the girls are left to pick up the pieces of their lives and attempt to return to their normal routine in the wake of this devastation. The play ends with Christian coming into the bar in a new suit, prepared to ask Mama for the final time to marry him. Christian does not allow himself to be deterred by Mama’s tough exterior and persists in challenging her until she allows him past her defenses and they kiss. Christian asks her again with a poem to be with him, and Nottage makes a choice here that allows Mama to develop as a charac- ter without losing her agency. “(He holds his hand out to Mama. A long moment. Finally she
takes his hand and he pulls her into his arms. They begin to dance. At first she’s a bit stiff and resistant, but slowly gives in…)” (Nottage 68). Mama does not immediately crumble to the
man offering her some relief from the burden she has been carrying. She doesn’t even tell him that she will marry him. Instead the two share a dance and we can see that there will be
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more to come for all of the characters. Mama’s immediate acceptance of Christian’s advances would have seemed disingenuous in the face of the tragic events that the audience just wit- nessed. She could not have given up the fight for her agency and the safety of herself and her wards in favor of the protection that Christian offers. She is right to be skeptical after Harari’s betrayal and Salima’s suicide, and stays true to her character and her conviction in the end.
Conclusion
Proof and Ruined are both plays with leading female characters that won the Pulit-
zer Prize, but they do not serve the theatre community, or the quest for gender parity within it, in the same way. Through this exploration of the agency of the female character I have demonstrated that the ability of a character to act on their own in regards to their decisions, motivations or reactions to other characters, without the need for direction or impetus from an outside source, specifically another member of the play, as well as their ability to take owner- ship and responsibility of their actions and defend them within reason is vital to the perception of women within the space of a production. Since historically, women were thought to be best suited to the role of actress, and are still struggling to break out of the confines of that expecta- tion, the way female characters are written has an important role in this fight for equality. In Proof’s leading female, Catherine, we are immediately confronted with a woman
who lacks the vital characteristic of agency, while in Ruined, Mama presents her opposite as a personification of the definition we have outlined. From the beginning of these two plays both David Auburn and Lynn Nottage have sculpted their protagonists to be soldiers in the ever present battle for equality that exists within the theatre community. For Catherine, a woman who needs the push of the characters around her in order to make decisions, uni- form of the foe has been donned. Mama, a woman who stands in the face of the opposition around her and maintains her standards regardless of the obstacles she faces, the friendly forces find their champion. With equality for women far from being achieved anywhere, the theatre being no exception, these women become the warnings and aspirations for play- wrights to heed and seek as they approach the task of writing their leading ladies.
Catherine is constantly looking to the male characters in order for her to make decisions. This is true when she asks the ghost of her dead father whether she should open the champagne, as well as when she doesn’t tell Hal that she is showing him her notebook after he reassures her that he doesn’t want their sexual encounter to be a one-night stand, or when she succumbs to his profession of allegiance after he has gone over her proof and is convinced that it is her work. Though we have taken into account that Auburn wanted us to question Catherine’s sanity given her father’s condition, these instances are not explained by that desire. Catherine acknowledges that she is talking to a ghost so why would she feel the need to ask if they should open the champagne? The question of her sanity is already raised in the fact that she is conversing with her dead father. In the instance of her reveal of the notebook, what purpose did withholding the information about her authorship serve? We might even argue that it would have been easier to question her sanity in the situation had she been eager to claim it as her own and been accused of lying. Yet this still doesn’t explain to us why she didn’t reveal her work to Hal on one of the many other occasions he had been there searching through her father’s notebooks, and instead only made the decision after he wants to continue their relationship. The audience’s ability to question her sanity would not have been impeded if she had been assertive in her ownership, especially if it had been in